‘Avengers 4’ Leak May Have Just Revealed Major HULK Change

The first promotional art for Avengers 4 was leaked earlier today, and while Marvel hasn’t come out and said whether or not it’s real or fake, but usually, it’d be called fake by now. The most interesting part of the concept art would definitely have to be the fact that Hulk is sporting a costume. It’s gotten many fans talking, and developing theories on what it might mean.

The Merged Hulk is the merger of Banner and the Savage and Grey Hulks. The Merged Hulk was later retconned into The Professor. The Professor, rather than being a merger of the three main personalities, was interpreted as a fourth, separate personality that represented Banner’s ideal self. The primary difference between the two is that the Merged Hulk demonstrated aspects of the Banner, Grey Hulk and Savage Hulk personalities (also possessing Banner’s intelligence, Joe Fixit’s cunning, and the Savage Hulk’s size and strength), while the Professor did not.The Merged Hulk was even prone to uttering “Hulk will smash!”, which was the Savage Hulk’s most commonly used phrase.

The Merged Hulk was an associate and leader of the team of superheroes called the Pantheon. Despite his exaggerated musculature, the Merged Hulk had a relatively normal looking face, resembling that of Banner. The Professor personality was defined during writer Paul Jenkins’ run as a “revelation” that the Merged Hulk was not actually a merger of the three personalities but rather a separate personality altogether.Unlike the Merged Hulk, the Professor was physically distinguished by having a ponytail, which the Merged Hulk did not.

Jenkins justified this by retconning into the Hulk’s continuity a new character named Angela Lipscomb (modeled after Jenkins’ own girlfriend) who knew more about Bruce Banner than even Doc Samson. Lipscomb confronted Samson with her observations of the Professor and Doc Samson validated them, despite events presented in previous issues to the contrary.The Professor is the largest of the three primary Hulk incarnations and he also possesses a higher base strength level.

While in a calm emotional state, the Professor is capable of lifting in excess of 100 tons. However, unlike the other Hulk incarnations, Bruce Banner subconsciously installed a type of safeguard within the Professor. When the Professor’s anger reaches a certain level, he will transform back into Bruce Banner, though with the mind and personality of the Savage Hulk. Due to this safeguard, the Professor is ultimately the weakest of the three primary Hulk incarnations despite being the physically largest.

Professor Hulk has the attributes of three Hulks: Grey Hulk, Savage Hulk, and Banner. He is the weakest of all incantations because he will revert to Banner with Savage Hulk’s mind if he gets too angry.

This would be an interesting development for the character, and would be a very interesting arc for him, considering how we saw him in Thor: Ragnarok. As you already know, Mark Ruffalo glowingly spoke about Hulk’s arc back before Ragnarok came out, saying:

“So basically, Kevin [Feige] pulled me aside before this, and said, ‘If you were gonna do a… if we were going to do a standalone Hulk movie, what would it be?’ And I said, ‘I think it should be this, this, this, and this and this, and ends up like this.’ And he’s like, ‘I love that. Why don’t we do that in the next three movies, starting with Thor 3 and then we go into Avengers 3 and 4.’ And I was like, ‘That sounds great!’ And so we are at the beginning of this arc.”

Some have also speculated on the suit that Hulk is wearing in the photo is made of vibranium: